Revenge porn victims fight back in Texas lawsuit

For many people, it’s a nightmare come true: Having your former lover post private, revealing photos on the Internet, accompanied by your full name, the city in which you live, links to your social media profiles, even your cellphone numbers.

And many victims of so-called revenge porn have learned it is perfectly legal.

However, there is a growing movement to fight back against site operators, owners and Internet companies who host such content. Many victims are waiting to see what happens in a class-action lawsuit that is turning up the heat on the problem of revenge porn.

Although “revenge porn” refers to the explicit photos posted by vindictive ex-lovers, there are also victims who believe their phone or e-mail accounts were hacked.

“I didn’t do anything wrong and I don’t feel like I should be blamed for it,” 32-year-old Hollie Toups, a teacher’s aide who lives in Beaumont, Texas, said.

She told KCRA 3 she still doesn’t know how her photos wound up online.

“Obviously, the photos are going to be around forever, whether I stay quiet or whether I fight back. I’d rather fight back,” she said.

Toups and dozens of other alleged victims are now suing the operators of a now-defunct revenge porn site Texxxan.com and its web host Go Daddy for invasion of privacy in a civil battle that could set the stage for future cases.

“A lot of these pictures were taken in the context of marriage, engaged relationships, serious relationships,” said attorney John Morgan, the lead attorney for Toups and other Texas plaintiffs. “For a lot of these people, (their) photos were never distributed. They weren’t sent via cell phone to someone else. They were just on the computer.”

According to experts, there are challenges to a civil case. Website operators may claim that the Communications Decency Act protects them against liability for user-submitted content, such as the videos on YouTube.

And for many victims, a legal fight is time-consuming and taxing.

“A civil suit for (victims) is a major thing for us to take financially. The privacy issue still weighs heavily for most victims in this type of situation,” said Lynne Brown, the director of Advocates for Public Safety.

There is no law that specifically criminalizes revenge porn in most states, including Texas and California, but Florida lawmakers are eyeing a bill that would make it a felony to post nude pictures and tag them with personal information.

Former Sacramento Sheriff John McGinness said a California law banning revenge porn would be beneficial.

“As it stands right now, there are no criminal consequences for a person who shares this information and there may very well be no civil consequences for it,” McGinness said.

University of California, Davis law professor Anupam Chander specializes in cyber law and said there are civil measures that victims can take, but a criminal law banning revenge porn would help victims tremendously.

“We haven’t yet as a society really come to understand what the implications are. We’ve never lived in a world where everything we did when we were 20 (years old) is remembered when we are 60,” Chander said.

KCRA 3 brought the problem of revenge porn to State Sen. Anthony Cannella, R-Ceres, who is on the Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee.

“I’m just learning about it and I think it’s appalling, quite frankly,” he said, adding that looking into a law would be worthwhile.

“People have expectation of privacy and if someone is getting these pictures and they’re hacking or stealing, there should be consequences for people that post those,” Cannella said.

Detective Sean Smith of the Sacramento Valley Hi-Tech Crimes Task Force said a law would act as a deterrent, but must also be supported by successful prosecutions.

“One of the difficulties in these cases would be victims coming forward in the first place because they have to relive the embarrassing experience they had to go through,” Smith said.